


You Were Beautiful

by apple_08



Category: Kpop - Fandom, Wonder Girls
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 08:50:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11894250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apple_08/pseuds/apple_08
Summary: growing up means growing apart





	You Were Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> this is a work in progress that i decided to post so...

You Were Beautiful

_not everything is about love. you had a way with words. every point you made was sharp, succinct. I couldn’t argue. even if I knew that what I felt was right, anything I said would come out wrong._

_“not everything is about this” you said, hands gesturing at the empty space between us._

_you walked away, pulling your bones out of their sockets. and I looked down at my palms, wondering when I had stuck them in a pot of ashes._

_when I looked back up again you were already out of sight._

1.

Yubin rolled up her sleeves as she got to work. Hair in a ponytail, fake eyelashes removed, she took the paint roller and put the first stripe of gold on her living room wall.

“You could just pay for someone to do this,” her father told her. “You have the money.”

She smiled, quirked her head because her dad never encouraged her to spend money before. The royalties from their last album must have made an impressive mark on his bank statements.

“It’s okay,” she reassured, “I’m doing this for fun.”

Honestly she wasn’t sure what fun was anymore. Her whole life since she was 19 she had been working. Working was fun, because her job was to get on stage and perform to adoring fans. Besides that… nothing else really existed.

She swallowed back the lump in her throat when those words instantly brought up memories of Yeeun. _not everything is about this_ She focused on painting to get rid of the intrusive thoughts.

Yubin did have a habit of turning everything into a totality. Despite her best intentions to forget, she couldn’t help but remember. She held Yeeun’s face with her hands, looked directly into her eyes, and whispered, “you are my whole world.”

At the time Yeeun blushed, leaned into her palm. Yubin didn’t wait for her reply, she just leaned in, lips pursed, eyelids fluttering closed, not before watching Yeeun follow suit, her hands instantly weaving around Yubin’s neck. It took some time, between kisses, before Yeeun finally mumbled “I love you” and then swallowed her own words with another kiss.

Surprisingly none of this interfered with Yubin’s wall-painting endeavor. Still, she sat down after a while, pressing her face against the cool wooden floor and the rest of the memories came flooding back.

“I love you,” Yeeun would whisper.

She would always whisper, or mumble. None the less genuine, especially when Yubin had the chance to see for herself, in Yeeun’s eyes, that she meant it. And because Yubin herself was so wrapped up in the feeling of being in love, she never sat aside and pondered over the fact that while Yeeun may have loved her, she loved carefully, like she was afraid.

2.

Getting a tattoo isn’t the most stereotypical thing to do after a breakup, especially since Yubin already has a couple from before, but what’s stereotypical is thinking about your ex while you’re getting one.

While the artist traces the stencil of a cloud on Yubin’s upper arm she thinks back to that day in the park. They had a few months back in korea, and they were supposed to be everywhere promoting, but JYP still managed to get them a day off. And they were just supposed to rest, spend the day sleeping or visit family maybe, but Yeeun insisted on going to the fair.

It was one of the many summer festivals, Yubin bought two big things of cotton candy and plopped down next to Yeeun on the bench. Instead of taking her own cone Yeeun took a bite from Yubin’s, and teasingly wrapped her arms around Yubin’s waist. She opened her mouth.

“feed me”

Yubin grinned. “You can do it yourself! You big baby…”

Yeeun leaned in, without a trace of guilt, and fit her mouth over Yubin’s, kissing her as if they weren’t on a very public park bench.

“Yeeun!” Her voice came out airy, breathless.

She was met with Yeeun’s blinding smile. Her eyes wrinkled up as she bit into Yubin’s cotton candy once again, and then buried her face in Yubin’s neck before she could be reprimanded.

At that moment Yubin knew she was in love. She had felt it before, but right then was when she knew. And maybe Yeeun knew it too, maybe that’s why they both kissed a little too eagerly, held hands too tightly, laughed way too loud into the deep hours of the night.

In the evening, far away from the crowd, they found a patch of grass in an open field where they laid down, watching the clouds.

“How far do you think that cloud travelled?” Yeeun squinted up at the sky. “Do you think it followed us here? From New York?”

The way her throat got a little thick made Yubin shuffle closer, tilting her head so it rested against Yeeun’s shoulder.

“Hey. You know how big the sky is?”

Yeeun nodded.

“That’s how big my love is for you.” Yubin was smiling before Yeeun even had the time to roll her eyes and elbow Yubin in the ribs.

“You’re such a dork,” she complained. Didn’t stop her from intertwining their fingers, and leaning her head against Yubin’s just to be even closer.

When the tattoo artist inevitably asked what the cloud was about, Yubin would just smile and say that cloudy days were her favorite kind of weather.

3.

So maybe Yubin really had no idea where she was going. Yeeun used to ask her often, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Yubin was massaging her calves, eyes still glued to the screen of the zombie movie they rented while in a hotel in Japan. “I don’t know, I guess… probably selling our 5th album. Maybe a world tour? Like a proper one. I always wanted to go to Malaysia.”

Yeeun would go quiet.

Every time she did that an uneasy feeling would settle in Yubin’s chest. She should’ve asked. She should’ve asked, but she was more afraid of hearing the answer, instead of being prepared to deal with it.

Her application for Unpretty Rapstar sent, Yubin sat in front of her laptop, figuring a little planning ahead wouldn’t hurt. JYP still hadn’t confirmed or denied her appearance on the show, but she was going to practice anyways. Just 10 minutes into writing lyrics she hit a wall, and her first instinct was to pick up her phone and text…

She sighed, turning off her phone and staring at the yellow wall. She painted it because gold was her favorite color, but right now it seemed to have lost a lot of it’s shine.

_“but I thought you hate gold?”_

_“it looks good on you”_

Yubin sighed. A year and a half later and everything still reminded her of her ex. She tried bringing her hands to write words but they wouldn’t work. Even though Yeeun was the only thing on her mind, she was impossible to write about. Maybe this is why everything she every said about her had come off strange. Because there were no words.

When she would run her fingers through Yeeun’s hair and say “you’re beautiful” it felt like she had mistranslated something. Yeeun smiled anyways, “thank you” she would say, and snuggle closer. They loved to stay inside together in the winter. Even though both of them were big fans of snow, it felt more important to stay inside with each other.

Right now Yubin was wishing she had just gone out and played.

4.

After all this time Yubin still hasn’t figured out what she wants, she decided. She finally figured it out. She had Yeeun’s album on repeat. Already texted her “congratulations!” both at midnight, and in the morning when she was awake, and now she had the album on repeat, trying to listen like she had never listened before.

Writing came easier. Even with Yeeun’s voice in the back of her head, Yubin found it easy to concentrate, and everything she’d pushed down over the years bubbled up to the surface.

Why was she here? What was the point of her doing music? What did she want to get out of life? What did she want to own, and make her own, out of everything and everyone else in the world?

She was nervous to share her raps once she had gotten onto the show, but it also felt important. Like staying in and holding Yeeun’s hand under the blanket while it stormed, it felt like she had finally climbed a level in her life. Like she had reached a necessary step.

She realized she put off a lot of things. And maybe because she was comfortable, or maybe because she was afraid. Maybe she was afraid that if she loved life too hard, if she worked too hard, or wrote too honestly, her greatness would consume everything else. Like there wouldn’t be anything else at the other side of her success, just emptiness.

(But there was one thing she was never afraid of loving, and that helped her realize that there was probably some good in loving other things as well.)

_I’ve become a giant. What are you going to do if I step on you, huh? I’m cultivating myself; my road is handicraft_

In the back of her head… _with the strength of youth and a yearning for experience, in search of new inspiration, you erased me for a moment, swept away by the thrilling sensation…_

Yubin had a habit of thinking in totalities. By the end of her first rap, she realized that truly, not everything was about love. But there was still a small chink in her heart from when love was ripped out of her.

5.

Even though they could just as easily text, Yubin enjoyed sending Yeeun emails. She would always reply shortly, as if annoyed that Yubin tried to contact her by such archaic means.

Honestly she does it because she needs the time and space an email offers to erase her words every time she starts to say “remember when”.

Its been two years, and she’s fine honestly. She’s accepted that they were over. Even though the memory of that night, the two of them on a phone call because Yeeun couldn’t bear to see her in person, well it still stings a little bit, but Yubin felt it getting numb as time passed.

Yeeun never wanted to bring up the past like she did. In that sense it was easy to just leave it there then, in the past.

(If Yubin finds a cute selfie from that day at the beach though, she’s within her right to feel some kind of way about it.)

And she was fine like that, and they were over, and Yeeun was just a beautiful memory to her. A muse sometimes, a conscience, but ultimately just a figment of her imagination late at night when she dreamed that they were talking to each other inside the same room.

On a Saturday while she was cleaning out her photo library, Yubin saw a video that made her laugh. (She hadn’t laughed about it for a long time). Yeeun had gotten herself stuck in one of the sequined dresses from their Nobody performance. They were in the dressing room, mostly alone except for Hyelim wandering in and out of the background. Yubin should’ve been helping her out of it but instead she was filming, and laughing hysterically from behind the camera.

“Yubin! Yubi- get this the fuck off me!”

Yubin cackled.

“I’m serious, unnie, I promise I’ll-“

“-you’ll what?”

You couldn’t see it on camera, but at that moment Yubin had slid her hand across Yeeun’s bare stomach. Despite the obvious jolt it sent up her skin, she was mostly angry from behind the tangled sequins.

Without thinking Yubin uploaded the video and sent it to Yeeun. The header read “I still don’t know what you were going to promise…”

At first she thought it was funny. Three seconds later she was wondering desperately if she could take the email back. Another minute later she had settled on it. After all this time there was a part of her that was still in love with Yeeun, as if she had never left, and they never spent any time apart.

A separate part had accepted that she should move on. And it was that part that formulated the next email, with a folder of all her favorite pictures, and a message line that read “You Were Beautiful”.

Even if she still loved her, she was fine with letting her go. They had both grown up a lot since then. In the end her greatest love was her greatest lesson, and there was a part of Yubin that was absolutely okay with that.

6.

_letters in the mail didn’t do justice to your voice._

_what does that mean, I asked._

_I wanted to see you, you mumbled, and my heart fluttered just a bit, because you always mumbled when you were trying to hide that you loved me more than you let on._

_it is about love, you said. It’s not about you and me, or being in a relationship, but it is, and love is everything, at the end of the day._

_are you sure? I asked because I wasn’t anymore._

_and then you walked up to me, closer, like we were vines that needed to hold each other up for support. I’m sorry I hurt us, you whispered, because you were regretful, but I know what I want now. and above it all I want you to be a part of it._

_having you back in my arms was like dusting myself off after a hibernation. we’re both awake now, and spring was beginning just over your shoulder_


End file.
